There’s no actual point to this bit of writing. Yesterday was just such a bizarre, stupid day that it merits its own little corner of the internet.

I had a fun(-ish?) dream the other night involving the zombie apocalypse. Loki was in it, of course, but he wasn’t the cause of the chaos, for once. He was my survival buddy, for lack of a better term. In the dream, he owned a high end art gallery, and we went there to stock up on supplies. What kind of supplies, I couldn’t say, because I was distracted by all of the plush fox toys he had in the gallery gift shop. There were also some wolf hounds there that were super excited to be rescued and hugged by us, but I may have been more excited by the hugging part than the pups, because my dreams echo reality. So it should be no surprise that I was in an unusually happy mood the next day at work, images of a dapper art broker Trickster dancing around in my brain with foxes and wolf hounds. It was a lovely day.

The next day, however. . . well, it was just stupid. It was one of those days in which everything goes so comically wrong for everyone that you end up giving each other exasperated looks and screaming, “IS THIS REALITY?! IS THIS OUR LIFE NOW?!”

A coworker recently got me addicted to Wish, and I was startled to stumble across Catholic vestments for sale there. They just popped into my feed one afternoon when I was scrolling idly through, and my brain did a few somersaults trying to compute why they were being offered. There may or may not have been a faint cackle in the back of my consciousness as something tickled at me. Something that’s tickled at me for a long time, something I’ve given more serious consideration to in the last few months.

I’ve been a licensed funeral director for many years, and though I originally got into the field because of my keen interest in embalming, I ended up really connecting with families and enjoyed coordinating the funeral and memorial services themselves. I’ve even led countless services, standing in for families that didn’t have pastors or priests. A few months ago, I attended a calling period for a friend of a friend, someone I’d never met, but I’d been invited to go because the deceased was pagan, and no one in his family understood it or knew what to do. I put together a poem/prayer that was consistent with his beliefs as I knew them, and I was asked to read it for everyone gathered. It apparently brought a great deal of comfort to his family, and the experience reignited an interest I had toyed with back in the mid-2000s.

It’s been mentioned once or twice that other Lokeans tend to get a lot of side eye in the community for some reason or another. Whether it’s because they use their affinity for Loki to excuse bad behavior, or they’re drawn into heathenry because of Marvel’s movies gifting us with Hiddles!Loki, or whatever, we tend to be the crazies of the community.

There’s been a lot of debate lately about Loki, moreso than usual, it seems. Different organizations are in contention about whether or not to embrace Himself as they do the rest of the Aesir and Vanir, or to continue holding him at arm’s length. I’ve noticed a few discussions delve into an interpretation of mythology that I myself hold, one that Shadow Spouse and I discussed at ECT ’18 during our Loki Marathon Blot.

I’ve also noticed that one of my favorite songs, “The Show Must Go On” by Queen, is a very Lokean song when listened to in context of that interpretation.

Fair warning, this post could be a bit of a brain dump. A lot of things have inspired it, but as I’ve thought about it over the last few days, different aspects of this topic kept weaving their way in, so I honestly don’t know what to expect even as I write.

And that’s the crux of it: honesty. I started mulling it over after last week’s kindred gathering to which I’d been invited, and when I was invited to officially join. I was cautious because in the years I’ve spent with these friends, I’ve learned that they had reservations about Loki and the people who are dedicated to him. And it’s understandable, especially since the Lokeans they’ve crossed paths with in the past use the Trickster aspect to excuse their bad behavior. Thankfully in more recent years, they’ve met “good” Lokeans, people who live with honor and integrity, those who follow Loki’s lead in accepting the consequences of their actions and bettering the community with their gifts. I’m honored that my friends consider me the latter type of Lokian as integrity has always been the foundation on which I base everything else. I joke it’s because I’m too lazy to lie or play games because remembering what you told to who is exhausting work, but seriously, I’ve got enough weirdness happening in my day-to-day to be anything but honest. I’ve always bristled at unnecessary, manufactured drama and I’ll play along to see what that person thinks they’re going to accomplish, but I don’t buy any of it for a second.

A lot of times when an adolescent rebels against their parents, they may start dabbling with pagany stuff like Wicca and witchcraft, tarot cards, and the like. Me? I dabbled in Christianity when I reached my “I’m going to be my own person and make my own decisions” phase. I wasn’t raised in a Christian household, so when I was exposed to it, I was fascinated by the ritual of it all. Very little about it made the slightest bit of sense to me, and parts of it were downright terrifying and badass and prime pickings for a revolt against parental influence. Transubstantiation? Fuck yeah, I’m down for cannibalism! Angsty little thirteen-year-old goth me was stoked.

I was raised heathen-lite. Father was first generation Norwegian, and my grandfather didn’t want his children baptized, even though his mother insisted lest people think they were damn dirty heathens. “But we are!” was his response as it was told to me. My father loathed Christianity and didn’t actively practice any religion, but he believed in Valhalla and wore a valknut. He told me that when Mom and I left, he started wearing Mjolnir instead, and the last time I saw him, back in 2004, he showed me his valknut and hammer pendants. My mom isn’t Scandinavian, but she loves mythology and made sure I was educated in Nordic lore. Our barracks were decorated with a lot of things we got during our trips to my grandfather’s homeland, a lot of animal pelts and troll stuff. I played with antique Viking swords that were bigger than my little bitty self. I grew up knowing the gods, even if I was too young to really understand the scope of their presence and influence.

When my mom and I came back to the States, she sent me to Catholic school for 2 reasons: the quality of the education was better than what the local public school district offered, and she wanted me to learn about Christianity and Judaism and major religions since they influenced so much of society and she knew I needed to be able to understand other people. I was 10 years old, and I had NO IDEA what Christianity was – I honestly, genuinely thought “Jesus Christ” was a swear word because my parents would utter that when they were angry or frustrated, and I’d get yelled at if I said it. So just imagine how fucking weird my first day of Catholic school was for me, sitting in homeroom staring at an excruciatingly detailed, bloody crucifix while the principal cursed at us over the loudspeaker during morning prayer. That was neat. I ended up in the monsignor’s office that morning to get a crash course in Christianity so I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown by the time we said prayer before lunch.

Even though I’ve been heathen for most of my life (save a few years when I dabbled in Christianity as a preteen – that’s a story that deserves its own writeup), I’ve always been a fairly solitary practitioner. I’m friends with a lot of heathens and kindreds, and get invites to events and holidays by different kindreds, but I’ve been close friends with members of a local kindred for about 8 or 9 years now. I’ve attended most of this kindred’s holiday celebrations and blots and sumbels for many years, except for a bit of a hiatus when I was full time for a busy-but-understaffed funeral home. I was their guest for ECT and got to stay in their cabin, and they volunteered me to help represent them at the Main Ritual that weekend. I’ve been very active with them ever since, and tonight I was invited to their Friendsgiving dinner.

It was a wonderful evening, and I love these folks dearly. They have been great friends for many years, and they were so glad to welcome my return to events when I started my medical break from the mortuary business. I was really incredibly touched by how happy they were to see me again after 2 years of missing out on bonfires and potlucks and sumbels. Tonight, they asked me to join their kindred as an official member.

I’ll just be up front and say I’m greedy as all get. The holiday of Thanksgiving just doesn’t mean that much to me. Having just one day set aside for gratitude and family isn’t enough – for me, it’s an everyday event. It has to be. I’m just so in awe of the blessings I have to take anything for granted. Nothing is mundane, glossed over. With the life I’ve had, everything I’ve survived, everything I’ve seen others go through… I just have to be so thankful for everything, no matter how little, how silly.

Take toilet paper, for instance. Do you have any idea how blissful it is to have tp at the ready whenever you need it? I didn’t, until I went to BCT. The Army issued ONE ROLL per recruit PER MONTH. The guys were fine with that, more or less. Us women? Things would get pretty damn stressful and nerve-wracking halfway through the month. We’d steal napkins from the D-FAC when possible and pray that if there was a Porta John at some distant range that it would be stocked, but that was rarer than a happy drill sergeant. It’s been 14 years since I returned from BCT, but I had vowed to never again take tp for granted, and I fucking kept that promise. There’s no freedom like knowing how easy it is to walk to the corner store and drop a few bucks for a jumbo mega pack of toilet paper when I’m down to my last roll. Toilet paper, coffee, and the chance to sleep in every so often: little things that make all the difference, trivialities that should never be taken for granted.

A wonderful, marvelous thing happened today: a second cousin from my father’s side found me on Facebook and reached out to me. I’ve been very estranged from my father’s family for years, and I only knew my grandparents and an uncle. One aunt passed before I was born, and the other aunt disowned everyone when I was an infant, so that side of the family has always been very small to me and very detached. So much so, that even though I was the only grandchild, I was never informed of my grandparents’ passing. I learned of their deaths years later when I Googled myself to make sure nothing questionable came up when I was looking for my mortuary internship. My full name appeared in both obituaries, and it was a very unnerving, upsetting discovery. But hey, we’re a family that redefines estrangement, so what could I do? It’s just how things go.

So it was thrilling to hear from a family member, my father’s cousin, the daughter of his namesake (which surprised me because I didn’t realize my grandfather had another brother, much less one he’d named his first born son after!). She’d found me because she’d just learned of my father’s death, and she saw my name in his obituary. She verified my parents’ names and family connections, and sure enough, we’re second cousins. Neat!